Gentoo has come out the fastest due to the optimisations
in my case for Pentium 4

Like headache posted earlier, you can't reliably predict if your application-level optimizations brings better performance. It's been said many times before, and I'll say it again: The easiest way for optimization is to tune the Linux kernel, not applications. You can start doing so by selecting differnet I/O or task schedulers, for example.

Prelinking binaries is another way to speed them up. No need to go through lengthy fine-tuning of each application for the extra millisecond savings.

I've spent 7 days and umpteen installs trying to get Gentoo to work Im trying one last time generic everything.

So far I am unimpressed, command line and compiling is one thing. An OS that doesn't work no matter how much effort you put in to it is a collossal waste of time

Have you asked for help in the forums ? Gentoo does require/demand a bit of reading/research before installing - but it does work, in my case it took a bit of effort, but it's well worth it. Hope you get it going._________________Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood"

What he said wasn't bashing, what he said was simply reality there should be and if all goes well will be a simpler way to install Gentoo. I got it working on my third try after about nine hours [This was before the KDE split builds] on an amd 939 3200+ 2ghz with 512ram mind you] I would like to think I should be able to get to use my machine in maybe an hour or two if I am not doing any special use flags etc.

This is why you have binary repositories so that people can pull up to date packages into their install environment so that they won't have to deal with a nine hour compile because they immedeatly have to update their system. As far as being able to use your machine while compiling while this is largely true I can't seem to use Amarok while emerging unless I want to enjoy an extra slow compile operation and have my music skip on me due to 100% cpu usage. [I'm looking into lighter clients for when I happen to be running emerge commands.] So I think it really depends on exactly what you are doing with your system and the behavior of the particualr ebuilds with your system, I've had some programs totally devour my resources to the point of my system being entirely unusable for the duration of the compile process assumnig it ever actually ended._________________Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

What he said wasn't bashing, what he said was simply reality there should be and if all goes well will be a simpler way to install Gentoo. I got it working on my third try after about nine hours [This was before the KDE split builds] on an amd 939 3200+ 2ghz with 512ram mind you] I would like to think I should be able to get to use my machine in maybe an hour or two if I am not doing any special use flags etc.

This is why you have binary repositories so that people can pull up to date packages into their install environment so that they won't have to deal with a nine hour compile because they immedeatly have to update their system. As far as being able to use your machine while compiling while this is largely true I can't seem to use Amarok while emerging unless I want to enjoy an extra slow compile operation and have my music skip on me due to 100% cpu usage. [I'm looking into lighter clients for when I happen to be running emerge commands.] So I think it really depends on exactly what you are doing with your system and the behavior of the particualr ebuilds with your system, I've had some programs totally devour my resources to the point of my system being entirely unusable for the duration of the compile process assumnig it ever actually ended.

1) Actually, I do think that gentoo's installation way is like kinda survivor's test for anyone who want's to maintain it a few

2) what about PORTAGE_NICENESS.

3) Gentoo is what you made of it, if you bash it for being utter shit, then YOU made the shit

An OS that doesn't work no matter how much effort you put in to it is a collossal waste of time

That sounds like the dreaded pebkac error._________________Inspiron 4100 & Sun UltraAXe
Portage on Solaris|Dell Laptop Hacks
The way you feel about organized religion is the same way I feel about organized socialism.

Why? Because all the processor specific extensions (SSE2) are already built into i686. So there's nothing "new" you gain, just a couple of timing tweaks.

Now i686 and proc specific give you an advantage over i586, which dont have those extensions built in.

Conclusion: ArchLinux, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, etc are all just as fast as almost any gentoo install, because they are all i686 optimized.

Hence: Gentoo sucks.

I agree, fusibou... Really, the advantages are great. Not only does it feel "speedier" than other distros, the fact that I can upgrade everything with one command is just awesome.

I wouldn't worry about that because this person who wrote that doesn't know what he is talking about. He should first read, why we build software from source, he is just ignorant. Don't pay attention to him._________________A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath,
Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!

I figure it's because we do stuff in what is perceived to be a more complicated approach, other linux users automatically think because of this we consider ourselves to be l33ter, and are somehow up for a scrap.
which totally isn't the case, well speaking for myself , I couldn't give a crap what distros other people use, nor do I care if they know more than me.
Gentoo community is great, cause this is an attitude ive seen over an over again.

of course you get the ocasional nob-end hang out here, but I mean that's going to happen anyway, and I guess those are the real 'ricers' (whatever a ricer is, I hear tell its something to do with slashdot (shouldn't it be dotslash ?))

(Ricer: from the latin word Ricarius meaning to suck at everything you attempt)

A person who makes unecessary modifications to their most often import car (hence the term "rice") to make it (mostly make it look) faster. The most common modifications are (but not limited to):

- Huge exhaust that serves no purpose but to make the car louder
- Large spoiler on the back that looks like something Boeing made for the 747
- Lots of after-market company stickers they don't have parts from, but must be cool
- Expensive rims that usually cost more than the car itself
- Bodykit to make the car appear lower, usually accented with chicken wire
- Clear tail lights and corner signals
- A "performace intake"- a tube that feeds cold air to their engine usually located in areas of excessive heat (behind or on top of the engine)
- Most of these riced cars (a.k.a. rice rockets or rice burners) are imports; Honda Civics, Accords, Integras, CRXs, RSXs, Del Sols Mitsubishi Eclipses, Lancers, Subaru Imprezas, however there are some domestics such as Chevrolet Caviliers, Dodge Neons, Ford Focus; small, slow, economy cars designed specifically to go slow. Please note that some Supras, Skylines, WRX's and other higher performance imports are designed to go fast, and are therfore not always considered rice. It really depends on the severity of the case.

The "ricer" attempts to make their car "performance" by adding the modifications listed above. These ricers are not confined to any one ethnic group or color, however different ethnic groups are known for certain styles.
Honda Civics with big spoilers and 4" exhaust tips are considered to be ricers.

I find all this talk about ricers faintly amusing. I don't use gentoo because it's source-based, and I don't really care about optimizations beyond vanilla i686. I just happened to be curious enough to see what all the fuss over gentoo was about, and I liked the system I built. So I use it. Surely I can't be the only one._________________noobus perpetuus

heh heh, my signiture on Slashdot is "You gotta love us Gentoo Ricers :p". Haven't gotten any hate mail yet...maybe it's because I almost never post.

But I'm not a ricer, really. I love speed, and I just bite my lip when I use Windows and wait for Mozilla to login. But this isn't why I use Gentoo. I use Gentoo because I crave the compatibility it offers. For one thing, virtually every piece of hardware that will run under Linux is supported under Gentoo (think Xbox). That's more than I can say for my nForce2 LAN in RedHat. Lets see, with Gentoo it's easy for me to add new hardware and hard drives. I'm not sure how a binary distro deals with new drives. I wouldn't have known about /etc/fstab if it weren't for Gentoo. Not even Slackware makes you edit /etc/fstab anymore, so when you need to add a new drive and some script doesn't add it automatically it's time to hit google, or for some people linuxquestions.org.

I love Gentoo because it's so easy to do things like run Qt and GTK applications side by side in a fully compatible Fluxbox environment. I love Gentoo because installing software has never been easier. I love Gentoo because when something breaks (and things do break...) you can find a solution or get the solution by asking. I love Gentoo because we have funny discussions in OTW. I love Gentoo because we have an awesome weekly newsletter I devour every monday night. I love Gentoo because people don't even recognize what version of Linux I'm running. I love Gentoo because people automatically think you're hardcore when you tell them you use it. I love Gentoo because...Gentoo rules and I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn and control their computers.

I love Gentoo because it's so easy to do things like run Qt and GTK applications side by side in a fully compatible Fluxbox environment. I love Gentoo because installing software has never been easier. I love Gentoo because when something breaks (and things do break...) you can find a solution or get the solution by asking. I love Gentoo because we have funny discussions in OTW. I love Gentoo because we have an awesome weekly newsletter I devour every monday night. I love Gentoo because people don't even recognize what version of Linux I'm running. I love Gentoo because people automatically think you're hardcore when you tell them you use it. I love Gentoo because...Gentoo rules and I recommend it to everyone who wants to learn and control their computers.

First off who gives a damn about what other people say/type/think? personally I dont.
If they dont like something then they dont have to use it.
Personally I love gentoo because i have total control of the operating system. I compile everything from scratch and I no longer have to hunt down tons of dependancies.
I had alot of linux experience before i jumped into gentoo 2 years ago.
I ran slack, debian, redhat, suse, mandrake etc.. My fav was SuSE until i tried gentoo. it took 3 times but i finally installed gentoo properly and now that i fully understand how the OS works, what the OS needs to work etc.. I can fully say that I will never use another distro of linux aslong as portage is maintained.

NOW if portage was ported to BSD id try that.
I am aware that portage was made from BSD's ports system but IMHO ports is old. I prefer how portage works over ports thats just my opinion. If there was a gentoo style ports system in BSD I would more than likely use it and quit using linux.
again thats my opionion

BTW if thast guy says something else to you just say this: Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and yours stinks ^_^

"Oh yes you can", you say... Well I've been trying for two days and I can't get past the

Code:

emerge --emptytree system

.
First, openssl barfs in the bootstrap because there's some weird circular dependency with Perl.
Second, svgalib fails because I haven't gotten the kernel configured yet. But I can't configure the kernel because that's the
netx step.

Now, this wouldn't be too bad if it didn't take me four very long hours to try each fix attempt. But it does. Last I checked I have
a finite limit on the amount of time allocated to me for dealing with these stupid kinds of issues and I have already used up
36 years of that time on other stupid issues leaving approximately another 50 years to devote to this crap (barring cancer, bus accidents
or crazy, vengeful ex-girlfriends). Now, since my job takes up 40 hours and sleep takes up another 70 hours per week (Yes, that much;
Einstien needed that much sleep too). Eating and bathing takes up another 14 hours per week. That leaves 44 hours left over per week
(assuming I have no social life; which is accurate) So I can attempt only 28,600 bugfixes with gentoo's install crap before my time is up.

Oh... Start from stage three you say... Screw that! I picked up on gentoo because you are supposed
to be able to have it your [my] way, optimized for my hardware. Well Stage2/3 aren't optimized all the
way and if I'm going to get a half optimized system then I might as well just go and install RedHat or
Debian which have painless installs (RedHat more so than debian but I've already put in several hundered hours and solve
the debian stupid stuff)

"Oh yes you can", you say... Well I've been trying for two days and I can't get past the

Code:

emerge --emptytree system

.
First, openssl barfs in the bootstrap because there's some weird circular dependency with Perl.
Second, svgalib fails because I haven't gotten the kernel configured yet. But I can't configure the kernel because that's the
netx step.

Now, this wouldn't be too bad if it didn't take me four very long hours to try each fix attempt. But it does. Last I checked I have
a finite limit on the amount of time allocated to me for dealing with these stupid kinds of issues and I have already used up
36 years of that time on other stupid issues leaving approximately another 50 years to devote to this crap (barring cancer, bus accidents
or crazy, vengeful ex-girlfriends). Now, since my job takes up 40 hours and sleep takes up another 70 hours per week (Yes, that much;
Einstien needed that much sleep too). Eating and bathing takes up another 14 hours per week. That leaves 44 hours left over per week
(assuming I have no social life; which is accurate) So I can attempt only 28,600 bugfixes with gentoo's install crap before my time is up.

Oh... Start from stage three you say... Screw that! I picked up on gentoo because you are supposed
to be able to have it your [my] way, optimized for my hardware. Well Stage2/3 aren't optimized all the
way and if I'm going to get a half optimized system then I might as well just go and install RedHat or
Debian which have painless installs (RedHat more so than debian but I've already put in several hundered hours and solve
the debian stupid stuff)

^^^^^ this guy is why people hate Gentoo users._________________You're not afraid of the dark are you?

"Oh yes you can", you say... Well I've been trying for two days and I can't get past the

Code:

emerge --emptytree system

.
First, openssl barfs in the bootstrap because there's some weird circular dependency with Perl.
Second, svgalib fails because I haven't gotten the kernel configured yet. But I can't configure the kernel because that's the
netx step.

Now, this wouldn't be too bad if it didn't take me four very long hours to try each fix attempt. But it does. Last I checked I have
a finite limit on the amount of time allocated to me for dealing with these stupid kinds of issues and I have already used up
36 years of that time on other stupid issues leaving approximately another 50 years to devote to this crap (barring cancer, bus accidents
or crazy, vengeful ex-girlfriends). Now, since my job takes up 40 hours and sleep takes up another 70 hours per week (Yes, that much;
Einstien needed that much sleep too). Eating and bathing takes up another 14 hours per week. That leaves 44 hours left over per week
(assuming I have no social life; which is accurate) So I can attempt only 28,600 bugfixes with gentoo's install crap before my time is up.

Oh... Start from stage three you say... Screw that! I picked up on gentoo because you are supposed
to be able to have it your [my] way, optimized for my hardware. Well Stage2/3 aren't optimized all the
way and if I'm going to get a half optimized system then I might as well just go and install RedHat or
Debian which have painless installs (RedHat more so than debian but I've already put in several hundered hours and solve
the debian stupid stuff)

^^^^^ this guy is why people hate Gentoo users.

Ah, but I notice that you fail to refute anything that I said. This thread started as a "Gentoo sucks" flame war.
That was obvious from the very first post. Am I not also allowed to voice dissatisfaction? Or is this yet more
evidence that gentoo is "our way, too bad. Shut up."?

I've tried a lot of linux distributions over the last 14 years (yes, since 1991) and gentoo, so far, is hands down the
hardest,longest and buggiest one to install that I've tried. But as I can see from your post aimed at insulting me personally
that you have no evidence to the contrary nor any help to offer.

"Oh yes you can", you say... Well I've been trying for two days and I can't get past the

Code:

emerge --emptytree system

.
First, openssl barfs in the bootstrap because there's some weird circular dependency with Perl.
Second, svgalib fails because I haven't gotten the kernel configured yet. But I can't configure the kernel because that's the
netx step.

Now, this wouldn't be too bad if it didn't take me four very long hours to try each fix attempt. But it does. Last I checked I have
a finite limit on the amount of time allocated to me for dealing with these stupid kinds of issues and I have already used up
36 years of that time on other stupid issues leaving approximately another 50 years to devote to this crap (barring cancer, bus accidents
or crazy, vengeful ex-girlfriends). Now, since my job takes up 40 hours and sleep takes up another 70 hours per week (Yes, that much;
Einstien needed that much sleep too). Eating and bathing takes up another 14 hours per week. That leaves 44 hours left over per week
(assuming I have no social life; which is accurate) So I can attempt only 28,600 bugfixes with gentoo's install crap before my time is up.

Oh... Start from stage three you say... Screw that! I picked up on gentoo because you are supposed
to be able to have it your [my] way, optimized for my hardware. Well Stage2/3 aren't optimized all the
way and if I'm going to get a half optimized system then I might as well just go and install RedHat or
Debian which have painless installs (RedHat more so than debian but I've already put in several hundered hours and solve
the debian stupid stuff)

^^^^^ this guy is why people hate Gentoo users.

Ah, but I notice that you fail to refute anything that I said.

Not to get this drawn into another stupid flame war, but I dont care...maybe you lack the proper digits to run a PC? Who knows and who cares. Go use Ubuntu if you cant get Gentoo up and running, no shame in quitting...smokers do it all the time.

You are just too precious, can I take you home with me?_________________You're not afraid of the dark are you?

Oh... Start from stage three you say... Screw that! I picked up on gentoo because you are supposed
to be able to have it your [my] way, optimized for my hardware. Well Stage2/3 aren't optimized all the
way and if I'm going to get a half optimized system then I might as well just go and install RedHat or
Debian which have painless installs (RedHat more so than debian but I've already put in several hundered hours and solve
the debian stupid stuff)

For one thing, virtually every piece of hardware that will run under Linux is supported under Gentoo (think Xbox). That's more than I can say for my nForce2 LAN in RedHat. Lets see, with Gentoo it's easy for me to add new hardware and hard drives. I'm not sure how a binary distro deals with new drives.

If you're not sure, then why are you saying Gentoo is better? You have no basis to make that claim if you don't know how other distros deal with hardware. FWIW, most of the hardware issues are taken care of by the kernel and this is not specific to any particular distro.

Quote:

I wouldn't have known about /etc/fstab if it weren't for Gentoo. Not even Slackware makes you edit /etc/fstab anymore, so when you need to add a new drive and some script doesn't add it automatically it's time to hit google, or for some people linuxquestions.org.

I was editing /etc/fstab from day 1 when I got Fedora. It's not that hard and there is a man page that explains everything. But you can't really blame other distros for you failing to look at the guts of Linux. It's not like Windows where all this stuff is sealed off.

Quote:

I love Gentoo because it's so easy to do things like run Qt and GTK applications side by side in a fully compatible Fluxbox environment.

I got news for you. You can do that in any distro. You can do that on *BSD (yes, I tried, and it works). That's because this isn't anything special. Heck, you can run QT and GTK applications side by side without using a window manager at all. I've done it. It works. On any distro. QT and GTK are just shared libraries that applications use. It doesn't matter which window manager you are using. More importantly, you don't have to do anything to make it work, because there's nothing to make work in the first place.

Quote:

I love Gentoo because installing software has never been easier.

I thought Synaptic with apt-get backend was about the easiest way possible to install software, and it didn't take hours to do the installation. I still like portage, but let's not pretend it's miles above every other package management system. It's not. All of them have pretty much the same features: dependency resolution, automatic downloading, installing, uninstalling, querying, searching, etc. The difference is that portage is for installing from source, which is something that is very much lacking in binary only distros (there you have to manually download, configure, make and install the software, with all that that entails and no special patches for bugs or compatibility -- portage takes care of all that). That's what sets portage apart from other systems.

Quote:

I love Gentoo because people automatically think you're hardcore when you tell them you use it

Actually, people generally think you're a ricer or some kid trying to be 1337. And whatever you do, don't go on Slashdot with this attitude.

The difference is that portage is for installing from source, which is something that is very much lacking in binary only distros (there you have to manually download, configure, make and install the software, with all that that entails

Whilst not quite as easy as in Gentoo, accomplishing the same thing in a binary distribution isn't nearly as cumbersome as you make it out to be, thank goodness.

Debian's apt-build takes care of three of the four stages you mentioned automatically (downloading, compiling and installing the software) and the only manual configuration the user need do is if he wishes to change the parameters passed to the ./configure script. Bug 182533 gives a nice example showing how one would go about building oneself a midnight commander package with the optional --with-samba flag enabled:

The difference is that portage is for installing from source, which is something that is very much lacking in binary only distros (there you have to manually download, configure, make and install the software, with all that that entails

Whilst not quite as easy as in Gentoo, accomplishing the same thing in a binary distribution isn't nearly as cumbersome as you make it out to be, thank goodness.

Debian's apt-build takes care of three of the four stages you mentioned automatically (downloading, compiling and installing the software) and the only manual configuration the user need do is if he wishes to change the parameters passed to the ./configure script. Bug 182533 gives a nice example showing how one would go about building oneself a midnight commander package with the optional --with-samba flag enabled:

I was trying to be generous to Portage. I know that there are things like source RPMs and equivalent on other non-RPM distros. The point is, Portage is made for source-based installation, whereas in other distros, the system is made for binary-based installation.